Immigration. Medicaid. The minimum wage. CHN’s coalition members are producing amazing work on really important topics. Last month, we introduced a blog series we’re calling Resources from the around the Coalition, highlighting important pieces you’ll want to be aware of. There are even more great works to showcase this month, so without further ado, here they are:

• Results from a national survey conducted by the National Immigration Law Center, the Center for American Progress, and Tom K. Wong of the University of California, San Diego show that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program significantly improved the lives of recipients. The good outcomes include increased participation in the labor force, a 45% increase in average hourly wages, increased education and increased access to transportation. The accompanying report notes, however, that “an additional 4 million or so people would be eligible to apply for the 2014 deferred action programs, which remain on hold…” and “given DACA’s broad economic and societal benefits, allowing deferred action to move forward would reap even larger rewards.”

• The Center for American Progress (CAP) also has a state-by-state analysis of the economic impact of DACA, as well as the DACA expansion and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) programs included in President Obama’s executive order issued in November. In short, CAP estimated that the three deferred action programs will grow the economy cumulatively by $230 billion over 10 years. See the impact the programs will have on GDP, income, and jobs in your state with their interactive map.

• The Economic Policy Institute’s new minimum-wage tracker allows advocates to compare their state’s minimum wage to the federal minimum wage. The interactive map—which can be filtered by minimum-wage dollar amount, recent and upcoming minimum-wage increases, recent updates to minimum-wage laws, and the presence of indexing—will be continually updated as states and localities increase their minimum wages.

• As a part of their Medicaid at 50 series, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities took an in-depth look at how Medicaid helps millions of people in every state. Such as: Medicaid saves lives, reducing mortality for low-income adults by 6% in states that were studied. You can explore this data in their state-by-state fact sheets, which includes the number of children, seniors, and people with disabilities helped, as well as facts that illustrate how effective and efficient Medicaid is.

• The National Skills Coalition’s 2015 state legislative round-up highlights states that took steps to close the skills gap by increasing access to career pathways and setting policies to support job-driven training. They also cover states that also took steps to implement the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).

• A new report from CLASP analyzes the nation’s 100 largest school districts, focusing on high-poverty schools (where at least 75 percent of students live in poverty) and low-poverty schools (where 0 to 25 percent of students live in poverty). Course, Counselor, and Teacher Gaps: Addressing the College Readiness Challenge in High-Poverty High Schools identifies major gaps in school resources and their impact on youth. Among their findings: only 41 percent of high-poverty high schools offer calculus, compared to 85 percent of low-poverty schools.

• Bonus item: Not from a member of the Coalition, but a very useful segment by Pam Fessler of NPR last week on the fact that disabilities and poverty often go hand in hand. The story noted that people with disabilities in the U.S. are twice as likely to be poor as someone without a disability and are far more likely to be unemployed. In fact, that gap has widened in the 25 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted.

All of these resources are great tools advocates can use when making the case of why we need more – not less – investments in human needs programs.